The Plan to Nuke Guantanamo Bay

On October 24th, 1962, then-Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev told the president of Westinghouse that he didn’t want a nuclear war over Cuba. But if it happened, Guantanamo naval base there would “disappear the first day” after a U.S. invasion of the island.

"At the time, Khrushchev’s threat seemed like empty bluster," the National Security Archive notes. What
Kennedy did not know was that the Soviets had deployed nuclear cruise missiles to Cuba, armed with 14-kiloton warheads, roughly the power of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima."

At about the time that Khrushchev was speaking with [the Westinghouse executive], a convoy of FKR cruise missiles was moving from Mayari
Arriba to a pre-launch position at the village of Vilorio. (See map below.) On the night of October 26-27, at the height of the missile crisis, the convoy was ordered to the launch position the village of
Filipinas, 15 miles from Guantanamo naval base…

[This was on the same day] that the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended an all-out U.S.
invasion of Cuba to destroy the Soviet missile bases. President Kennedy rejected the advice of his military advisers in favor of a diplomatic solution to the crisis that included a secret understanding between his brother and the Soviet ambassador.